Charles Amirkhanian (born January 19, 1945; Fresno, California) is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian extraction. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music. Performance artist Laurie Anderson praises his work: "The art of audio collage has been reinvented here...A brilliant sense of imaginary space."

Amirkhanian was Music Director of Pacifica Radio's KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1992; he directs the Other Minds Music Festival in San Francisco. He has played a key role in recording and championing the work of Conlon Nancarrow, among others.

In 1984, the American Music Center awarded him its Letter of Distinction for service to American composers through his work at KPFA FM in Berkeley, California. This was followed in 2005 by another for his co-founding and directing the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, California. From ASCAP in 1989 he received the Deems Taylor Award, also for service to American composers. As a composer he was awarded a grant in 1997 from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. In 2009, Chamber Music America and ASCAP honored him for his Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music with Other Minds.

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (born 15 May 1948), commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno ( /ˈiːnoʊ/^{[citation needed]}), is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.

Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex, England, taking inspiration from minimalist painting. During his time on the art course at the Institute, he also gained experience in playing and making music through teaching sessions held in the adjacent music school.

He joined the band Roxy Music as keyboard and synthesiser player in the early 1970s. Roxy Music's success in the glam rock scene came quickly, but Eno soon tired of touring and of conflicts with lead singer Bryan Ferry.

Eno's solo music has explored more experimental musical styles and ambient music. It has also been extremely influential, pioneering ambient and generative music, innovating production techniques, and emphasising "theory over practice". He also introduced the concept of chance music to popular audiences, partially through collaborations with other musicians.

Bernard L. Krause (born December 8, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American musician, author, soundscape recordist and bio-acoustician, who coined the term biophony and helped define the structure of soundscape ecology. Krause holds a Ph.D. in bioacoustics from Union Institute & University in Cincinnati.

Bernie Krause was born in 1938. Somewhat of a musical prodigy, by age 3-1/2 he studied violin and by age 4 classical composition. He performed on a variety of stringed instruments (cello, bass, viola, harp) but fell in love with the guitar. He was disappointed when in 1955 not a single music school to which he applied would accept him with guitar as his primary instrument. Krause went on to work as a studio guitarist on jazz sessions and, occasionally, on early Motown sessions. He also worked as a recording engineer and producer in Ann Arbor while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He joined The Weavers in 1963, replacing Pete Seeger and stayed with them until they disbanded a year later.

Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an American film editor and sound designer.

Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine (née Scott) and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch (1907–1967), a painter. He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961. He then attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, graduating in Liberal Arts.

While at Hopkins, he met future director/screenwriter Matthew Robbins and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, with whom he staged a number of happenings. In 1965, Murch and Robbins enrolled in the graduate program of the University of Southern California film school, successfully encouraging Deschanel to follow them. There all three encountered, and became friends with fellow students such as George Lucas, Hal Barwood, Robert Dalva, Willard Huyck, Don Glut and John Milius; all of them would go on to be successful filmmakers.

Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969). Subsequently, he worked on George Lucas's THX 1138 and American Graffiti and Coppola's The Godfather before editing picture and mixing sound on Coppola's The Conversation, for which he received an Academy Award nomination in sound in 1974. Murch also mixed the sound for Coppola's The Godfather Part II which was released in 1974, the same year as The Conversation. He is most famous for his sound designing work on Apocalypse Now, for which he won his first Academy Award in 1979. In 1985 he directed his one film, Return to Oz, which he co-wrote with Gill Dennis.

Nicolas Slonimsky (April 27 [O.S. April 15] 1894 – December 25, 1995) was a Russian born American composer, conductor, musician, music critic, lexicographer and author. He described himself as a "diaskeuast" (from Greek διασκευαστής); "a reviser or interpolator."

Slonimsky was born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy in Saint Petersburg. He was of Jewish origin, but his parents adopted the Orthodox faith after the birth of his older brother, and Nicolas was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. His maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, was his first piano teacher.

Slonimsky was brought to the United States in 1923 by Vladimir Rosing to work as an accompanist in the newly formed Opera Department at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he continued his composition and conducting studies. He also accompanied Rosing at many of his vocal recitals, including a performance at Carnegie Hall in October 1924. After two years, Slonimsky moved to Boston to work as an assistant for Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky, for whom he had earlier worked as a rehearsal pianist in Paris. During this time, Slonimsky taught music theory at Boston Conservatory and the Malkin Conservatory, and began to write music articles for The Boston Evening Transcript, The Christian Science Monitor and the magazine, The Etude.